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A Sacrifice to Appease NPR’s Gods

A long time ago, a kingdom was beset by tempestuous storms, and it was decided that one of the most prized citizens would be fed to the volcano as a sacrifice to appease the punishing gods. After the sacrifice was made and the crowd exulted, a young visitor turned to the man next to him and asked if this ritual always worked. “Nah,” said the local. “Does wonders for morale, though.”

Confronted by a similar tumult in the wake of the ill-conceived and poorly executed decision to fire the commentator Juan Williams for remarks made on Fox News, NPR recently offered a sacrifice of its own. On the day an outside investigation into the Williams matter concluded, Vivian Schiller, chief executive of NPR, accepted the resignation of Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president for news.

Ms. Weiss, a 30-year veteran of NPR, was, by many accounts, talented and well respected. But with conservative members of Congress calling for cuts in public financing of NPR, it seems that somebody has to end up in the volcano.

It’s not at all clear why that person was Ms. Weiss or what actions preceded her resignation. When the outside report was concluded last week, Ms. Schiller met with Ms. Weiss and told her she no longer had confidence in her. She asked her to resign without getting into specifics about why that was necessary. The board took no ownership over that decision in its statement, saying only that it “recommended that certain actions be taken with regard to management involved in the Williams contract termination.”

In fact, no one accepted direct responsibility for Ms. Weiss’s departure. Ms. Schiller, a former senior executive at The New York Times, met with members of the news staff on Thursday and Friday and, according to several people who attended, insisted that the two events — the conclusion of the investigation and Ms. Weiss’s resignation — were unrelated. She also told members of the staff that while the board did not have authority over anyone’s job except hers, she added that the board was “involved” in the decision.

Dave Edwards, the director and general manager of WUWM in Milwaukee and chairman of the NPR board, said in a phone interview that “the board did not tell Vivian that Ellen needed to go,” adding: “I can’t say it in any stronger language than that. The board did not take any action with regard to Ellen because quite frankly, that is not our role.”

Ms. Schiller declined to comment to reporters on how Ms. Weiss’s departure came about. Ms. Weiss told The Times: “I resigned, that’s what I did. I’m just going to leave it at that.”

The skirmish over a single employee would seem quaint for an outfit that, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, brought a tote bag to a knife fight, except for the fact that NPR, despite its laid-back reputation, is a programming and news powerhouse in this country, with 17 foreign bureaus and 15 in the United States and over 27 million listeners a week (over half of whom identify as conservative or moderate, by the way).

Particularly now that TV network news ratings have tumbled to earth and cable news has atomized along political lines, NPR is increasingly the resource of choice for Americans, in red and blue states alike, who are interested in serious news.

Make no mistake, NPR created a real problem with Mr. Williams’s firing. On “The O’Reilly Factor” on Oct. 18, Mr. Williams suggested that when he was traveling, seeing people in airports in what he called “Muslim garb” made him nervous. Ms. Weiss decided based on that statement, and a number of others, that NPR needed to terminate its contract with Mr. Williams. She called Ms. Schiller, who was traveling that day, and briefed her on the decision. Ms. Weiss subsequently called Mr. Williams and said his contract was being terminated.

Apart from the manners issue — never fire by phone or break up by text, I always say — the firing was a public relations disaster. NPR’s ombudswoman, Alicia C. Shepard, received 23,000 e-mails about the firing. Mr. Williams was the most prominent black man in a pervasively white organization, and he was viewed as an exception to the liberal orthodoxy that NPR has often been accused of holding.

Mr. Williams also made the comments on Fox News, a persistent opponent of publicly financed broadcasting. (Always spoiling for a fight, Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, gave Mr. Williams a contract on Fox News and called NPR executives Nazis.)

It’s hard to see how this week’s actions will spare NPR from avenging gods of any political stripe. The board was told of the results of an independent investigation conducted by the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges: there is apparently no written report.

The board’s statement was difficult to unpack, consisting mainly of a list of bland procedural changes — “Establish a committee,” “Review and update policies/training.” Ms. Weiss’s departure was mentioned in a single line: “NPR also announced that Ellen Weiss, senior vice president for news, has resigned.”

(After stating that it supported Ms. Schiller, who has been an able and popular chief executive, the board dealt a wrist-slap, eliminating her bonus for 2010.)

The board of NPR is in a precarious position. It is essentially made up of its clients, representatives from the local public radio stations that provide the bulk of the financing for the national network. And yet, many of the board members run local stations that are far more dependent on public funds than NPR and have little appetite or ammunition for a battle with Congressional opponents.

Many journalists at NPR have expressed alarm and dismay over Ms. Weiss’s departure. Guy Raz, the weekend host of “All Things Considered,” told me that “many people in the newsroom are devastated that she left and still mystified about the reasoning.”

Ira Glass, host of “This American Life,” said: “One of the things that public radio does badly is inventing its own future. The biggest franchises are 30 years old. Ellen is the kind of journalist and manager who had the ability to navigate the bureaucracy and make new things happen.”

“It’s outrageous that Ellen Weiss is being painted as some kind of flaming liberal,” said Adam Davidson, the producer of “Planet Money.” “She was obsessed with NPR becoming a solid, mature, nonideological news organization, and we are all literally scratching our heads over what other kind of person could fill that role the way that she did.”

These opinions are not universal. Ms. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, wrote that news of Ms. Weiss’s departure was received in different ways in the newsroom. “The news rocked the staff, which has been divided about Weiss’s leadership,” she wrote. “Some questioned whether the punishment fit the crime. Some quietly rejoiced.”

In either case, the entire incident leaves Ms. Schiller leading a divided organization into a critical budget battle.

At the time of Mr. Williams’s firing, Ms. Schiller was very forthcoming, telling The Times: “I’m the C.E.O., so ultimately the buck stops with me. I’m not trying to pass it on to anyone else. But I’ll tell you, there was no daylight between me and the senior news team at NPR, the top management of news.”

Nothing like a few months of controversy and recrimination to open up some daylight. The buck, as it turned out, stopped elsewhere.

Correction: January 11, 2011

The Media Equation column on Monday, about the resignation of Ellen Weiss, the NPR executive who fired the commentator Juan Williams for comments made on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a Fox News program, misstated the date the program was broadcast. It was Oct. 18, not Nov. 20.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com; twitter.com/carr2n

A version of this article appears in print on January 10, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Sacrifice On High At NPR. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe